The Solar System and Its Perfect Designer
By R' Boruch Yonah Lipton
Rosh Chodesh Menachem Av (July 22), besides being a time when we decreased our joy, was also the occasion of a rare phenomenon. There was a total eclipse of the sun, witnessed by millions of people in Southeast Asia. A Solar eclipse occurs when the moon is positioned directly between the earth and the sun. A solar eclipse does not occur with every new moon because the plane on which the moon orbits the earth is not the same as the plane of the earth-sun revolution. During a total eclipse of the sun, the disc of the moon covers the disc of the sun perfectly, revealing the brilliant but normally invisible corona of the sun. Whenever I hear of a solar eclipse I recall the words of a former science chairman in the public high school in which I teach. Although a good number of the science teachers in my school practice their religion, be they Jews, Christians, or Moslems, this particular chairman was a non-practicing Jew. It came as a surprise, therefore, when upon returning from his travels to see a total solar eclipse some years ago, that he said to me, "This, more than anything else, proves to me that there is a G-d." Faced with the fact that the moon is just the right size and at just the right distance to eclipse the sun perfectly, he could no longer attribute the workings of the natural world to chance but had to concede the existence of a Designer.
However, the author of a recent article in Scientific American (The Chaotic Birth of Planets, May 2008) does not share my former colleague's sentiments. Douglas N.C. Lin takes pains to argue that the solar system could not be the result of design. Lin concedes that the planets in our solar system are spaced exactly as they must be. He also does not deny that the orbits of the planets are all nearly perfect circles and that such a fact is difficult to explain if left to chance. But after presenting what he feels is "the most plausible" of the two planetary-origin scenarios proposed by scientists, Lin concludes, "The relative orderliness of our solar system does not reflect any grand design."
What proof does Lin bring that leads him to such a surprising conclusion? Not much. In the article, Lin presents the "sequential-accretion scenario" of planet formation, which says the planets formed from the agglomeration of kilometer-sized building blocks called "planetesimals," which were not unlike asteroids. Does Lin say scientists have witnessed planetesimals colliding to form planets? No. Does he say astronomers have actually observed planetesimals when looking at solar systems besides our own through telescopes? No. In the article, Lin simply outlines the steps involved in one planet-formation theory, and in so doing uses expressions like "probably," "may have," "presumably," "perhaps," "highly improbable," "harder to explain," "could," "one idea," "another idea," "maybe," and "believe." The theory thus seems to be based more on faith than on hard evidence. Lin also suggests that "gas evaporated," which would not be called good science even in my high school science classroom. Liquids evaporate. Gas condenses.
Yet, even if it should one day be proven that the planets in our solar system resulted from the collisions of these so-called "planetesimals," that does not mean the solar system was not designed. When my wife bakes challah, one does not see the challah right away. First, she takes flour from which she will make dough, and only afterwards will the dough be shaped into challah. Should I come into the kitchen when flour is sitting in the bowl, and later return to find freshly baked challahs, would it be proper to conclude that the challahs resulted from the random agglomeration of flour particles rather than from design? The flour in the bowl was but an early stage in a process that had as its purpose the formation of challah. Similarly, if G-d made planets not directly but as a result of the collisions of planetessimals, that does not mean the solar system fails to show design. It just means that G-d used a succession of stages to bring his design to completion.
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Boruch Yonah Lipton is the author of The Song at the Sea According to Rashi and The Sin of the Golden Calf According to Rashi, both available by contacting the author at boruchyonah@yahoo.com.
